Signs of the Times

I wonder if things that are meaningful  to us – signs, if you will – change with time.  I can’t recall any recurring “things” in my early life but maybe I was too busy running and BEING, to have noticed them.  Maybe I just wasn’t in the right place.

When contemplating chucking our life on Long Island and starting over at age 40 I was uncertain, thus vulnerable.  And, open.  Standing at the screen door of our 20’ X 24’ cabin in the Pennsylvania woods, I considered  the right ‘move’; my heart  was at home in the woods but my brain questioned leaving what we had achieved and become in New York.  A strange buzzing noise greeted me from the other side of the screen. In the darkness of a wooded twilight, the green thing that flew towards me seemed like a crazy-big locust.  I came to learn, it was my first experience with a hummingbird.

Two years later in Pennsylvania, after job hunting without success for weeks, alone and wondering if our choice had been the right one, I set out to put in a garden. With a shovel and pick-ax, I tried to dig out a row.  The boulder-rich, glacial terra firma was impossible. My harvest of rocks would far exceed any vegetable harvest, I lamented.  The more I used that pick and shovel, the more my back hurt, the more I struggled with my choice.

 After two weeks at hard labor, I was gutted. Physically and emotionally spent, dirt and tears streaming down my face, I caved in to the doubt and fear. Nothing was going right. I shouldn’t have made this move.  And then, without having made a sound, a ruby-throated jade gem hovered at my side.  Just hovered … looking at me. 

My heart soared at the realization that it was a hummingbird, and only the second one I had ever seen. That initial sighting was my first such ‘sign’  I was on the right path.  I was supposed to be here!!  And so, I ordered a truckload of dirt for the garden area.  Yeah, I was supposed to be here, but I didn’t have to do battle with rocks (aside from those in my head) to get on with my new life.

It’s been over 20 years since then. I have embraced raised-bed gardening – increasing my yields, growing new things and learning new techniques with each season. The hummingbirds are a constant in my life, from April into September. I never grow tired of them and spend hours watching, feeding, photographing and talking to them. I know their ‘voice’ now, and the sound of the beating wings so that I often hear their presence before I see them.  I’ve only seen the ruby-throated hummers so it is on my bucket list, to travel enough to see other varieties.  But I am grateful that I have these jewels in my life –  I had spent over a score of years in Florida and another dozen+  in New York without ever having seen one. Their appearance signals Spring in full bloom in my neck of the woods.

January in Florida happened quite by accident this year.  My Dad took ill and I was compelled to go down to be with him and my Mother. It wasn’t an easy decision in the dead of winter, to leave my life in Pennsylvania.  It isn’t easy being with my Dad as his health fails, or intruding in the routine of my Mother’s everyday life.  I wondered if I had made a wise choice although I knew I was needed there.  Sitting on the porch outside their home, I heard the familiar chirp and the humming of the wings.  In 17 years living at that house, my folks had never seen a hummingbird.  In fact, they’d never seen one at all except on my own front porch in Pennsylvania some 10 years ago. 

Not wanting to move, I wished my Dad could see this little blessing. The door of the house opened, and Dad with his walker, pushed himself out to join me on the porch. I told him about the hummingbird, he was incredulous.  And then, she appeared again, visiting the hibiscus flowers.  

Dad saw and heard that second visit; he spent another ½ hour outside with me talking and laughing with a vitality I hadn’t seen in months.  I told him it was a sign.  Two weeks later, sitting alone back at home in the woods, I’ve had a chance to relive that moment. I have pictures to go with the memories … not the best photographs I’ve ever taken but some of the finest I will ever possess.  And in retrospect, I realize I was right, that hummer was a sign.  To me.  I was right where I was supposed to be.